Bev Moon is Manager, Human History Collections at Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland Museum. In May 2026, Bev visited her family villages in Guangdong province in southern China for the first time. Bev describes her journey in both space and time as she encounters traces of the young lives of her parents and ancestors and finds a home in Taishan. An artist as well, Bev has a work in the museum’s collections titled Offering V (2023.57.1) which is on display in the Arts of Asia gallery and celebrates skills passed down by Bev’s mother and grandmother who taught her to knit and make 点心 dim sum.
In May I visited China for the first time.
"The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is today."
Chinese proverb
About 40 years ago, my parents offered to take me back to their ancestral villages in China. I said no. As a teenager, I was more interested in spending time with friends than exploring family history.
Only later did I realise how special that opportunity had been. Although they had left the villages more than 40 years earlier, my parents still had the local knowledge, language skills, and family connections that made returning possible. They knew the people, the places, and who still held the keys to the family homes. When they passed away, I thought that opportunity had disappeared with them. More than 80 years had passed since they had left, and the chances of finding anyone still alive who remembered them seemed remote.
Then, in May, my former sister-in-law Kathy, who grew up in Taishan, invited me to join her and my nephew on a trip to China. Of course, this time I said yes.
I was in China for only twelve days, but I packed a lot in. I saw ancient sites and futuristic cities, travelled on bullet trains, met pandas and robots, tasted all sorts of interesting food, and encountered plenty of quirky and unexpected things. It was an incredible trip, and I'll definitely be going back. But this time, visiting my parents' villages was my reason for being there. Both of my parents came from the villages of Taishan county, in Guangdong Province in southern China.
From the mid-1800s onwards, many people from this area left for places like New Zealand, Australia, North America and Southeast Asia. They left because of poverty, famine, political unrest and war. Some of the less fortunate were sold as slaves.
You can still see evidence of that history in the villages today, including fortified defensive watchtowers known as diaolou. Taishan is known as the “First Home of the Overseas Chinese”. My family's story is one of thousands that began here.
My mother was seven when she left China with her mother during the Second World War. She told me they walked for days on the dirt roads to reach the riverboats that would eventually connect with the ship taking them to New Zealand. She also remembered hiding in rice fields when the Japanese planes flew overhead. My father left China after the war, aged 20, in 1946 with his mother and younger brothers, joining his father who was already here.
One of the things that fascinated me most about Mum's family home was that it tells two very different stories. One side has remained much as it was when the family left in 1939. The other continued to be occupied by relatives and was gradually modernised, eventually gaining electricity and a heat pump.
Walking through the house, I was struck by the basic stove my grandmother cooked on and the hard surfaces they slept on. However, compared to my father’s village home, the house was well appointed. It had two storeys, stood beside the village well and had a courtyard, a chicken coop, and an outdoor toilet.
I was intrigued by the narrow defensive openings in the exterior walls, which occupants could use to keep watch and, if necessary, fire at approaching bandits or other threats. Dad’s family home, like many houses in Taishan’s villages, was shared by two related families. By the time we visited, it had stood empty for 80 years, after all its occupants had emigrated. Over the years, a tree had grown inside the house. My sister-in-law arranged for it to be cleared before our visit. Walking through the house was moving and eerie. It felt surreal to stand in the place where my father was born and spent his early years.
Although my father returned to his village only once after leaving, he never forgot where he came from. When he later opened a Chinese takeaway in Wellington, he named it Winglong after his village. For forty years, the shop served hungry customers in the Wellington suburb of Karori. Today, only one older couple still lives in his home village, in a slightly more modern house. The diaolou, which once had three storeys, now has just one remaining.
We paid our respects to the ancestors in both family homes. Traditional Cantonese customs draw on ancestor veneration, Taoism, Buddhism, and local beliefs. The idea is that family relationships continue after death and that the living have responsibilities to those who came before them. Incense is burned to carry prayers and respect to the ancestors. Paper money and other symbolic items are burned to provide comfort and necessities in the spirit world. Food, tea and wine are offered as hospitality, treating ancestors as honoured guests returning home. Firecrackers are lit at the front door to ward off wandering spirits and bad luck.
One thing I found especially interesting was the ancestral shrine in my mother's house. It contained the names of generations of ancestors I had never known about. For someone who knew very little about that side of the family history, it felt like a goldmine of information and has opened up a whole new avenue for me to explore. At the Ng ancestral hall, small wooden tablets lining the walls recorded generations of family members, including my own branch of the family. Portraits of the original Mr Ng and his wife, who lived around 2,000 years ago, hung on the adjacent walls. I was told that all Ng families can trace their ancestry back to him.
Seeing my family's place within that much larger story gave me a new appreciation for how important lineage and family history are in southern Chinese culture.
We also visited Haikou Pier in Duanfen Town, at the confluence of the Datong and Duanfen Rivers. For generations, it was a departure point for villagers leaving China for new lives overseas. Standing there, it was hard to believe my mother had made this journey as a seven-year-old child. Carrying her luggage, she walked for days to reach the pier before setting off for New Zealand.
A couple of years ago, I made an artwork by hand-stitching a letter onto one of my grandmother's handkerchiefs. It references my grandfather asking permission for his two brothers and their families to come to New Zealand. The official response was a refusal. Before finding that letter, I didn't even know those relatives existed. In the years since, I have often wondered what became of them.
So it was extraordinary to meet Yip Chi Yin, the daughter of my grandfather's brother, Yip Kim Ben. Her generational name, Yin, is the same as my mother's, although my mother always used the spelling Yen. She now lives in Hong Kong but grew up spending time in the very house my mother left behind. After wondering for years what had become of those relatives, it was surreal to be sharing a meal with one of them. The letter also reflects a wider story. For generations, overseas Chinese (including my father) sent money and letters back home to support their families in the villages and the town.
There’s a lovely little museum – Taishan Yinxin Museum and monuments in Duanfen town that tell this story.
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is today.
For years, I thought the opportunity to “return home” had passed me by. Then, unexpectedly, I was given the chance to walk the villages where my parents were raised, uncover more of my family's story, and meet relatives I never knew existed. I'm thankful that, this time, I chose to say yes.